


Flutter and Wow

by fictionalaspect



Category: Bandom, Panic At The Disco
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Travel, M/M, Roadtrips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-12
Updated: 2010-05-12
Packaged: 2017-10-09 10:23:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/86253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fictionalaspect/pseuds/fictionalaspect
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>We had enough stars in Mexico, </i>he thinks, and Brendon tugs on his sleeve, begins the process of dragging them both home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flutter and Wow

**Author's Note:**

> AU. I blame this entirely on too much Death Cab for Cutie on my summer playlist. Thank you to [](http://boweryd.livejournal.com/profile)[**boweryd**](http://boweryd.livejournal.com/) for the beta and handholding and [](http://anoneknewmoose.livejournal.com/profile)[**anoneknewmoose**](http://anoneknewmoose.livejournal.com/) for kindly pointing out my fail in a few key places ♥

They're in a shitty bar in an equally shitty, anonymous part of New York, somewhere all the way south of Houston and west of Broadway. Brendon is ecstatic because this particular shitty dive bar both contains dart boards and sells PBR by the pitcher.

 

"This," Brendon says loudly, weaving his way back through the crowd of dirty city-types. Jon can tell he's trying manfully not to spill the pitcher or lose an eye to a wayward dart-throw. "This is my favorite bar. Ever." He plonks the pitcher on their tiny table with less-than-perfect grace, and some watery beer sloshes out over the top.

 

"Hey," Jon says mildly, because the neat pattern that he was constructing on the tabletop from their green and red darts is now covered in beer. His darts are going to be all sticky. "I wanted to actually drink some of that, not lick it off the table."

 

"I'll buy you another one," Brendon says, tipping his smudged glass at a forty-five degree angle to pour. "Five fucking dollars, I can't believe that shit. I want a whole pitcher to myself."

 

"You don't need to drink a whole pitcher of beer right now," Jon points out, because he's kind of drunk and Brendon is tiny. Therefore, he thinks, Brendon does not need any more beer. If it takes Jon a few more minutes than normal to follow the thought to its eventual conclusion, well. Who's counting?

 

Jon wishes he wasn't quite so damp; the air is humid and heavy in the bar, too much moisture packed close with too many bodies. Through the glass and neon signs he can see it's still pouring outside. His feet and flipflops and the bottom of his jeans are wet with god-knows-what from the sidewalks.

 

Brendon shifts on the creaky wooden chair and winces, rubbing at his shoulder distractedly. It's second nature for Jon to lean across and dig his thumb into the muscle, and Brendon drops his head and stretches his neck to the side, making a small pleased noise. He raises his head at winks across the table at Jon and Jon smiles back, small and private.

 

It's good like this, the two of them, anonymous and half-drunk, hidden in the city in plain sight. There's some sort of unspoken agreement in place where neither of them have called anyone they know, preferring to just wander. Jon's got his guitar back at the hotel and a suitcase with a broken zipper and he feels almost guilty, for a second, at how fucking relieved he is that they've still got another month to bum around.

 

"Want to play darts?" Jon says. He's got them all lined up in a fishtail pattern, alternating green and red. It's very pretty but darts are meant to be thrown at things; right now they're not living up to their purpose in life.

 

"I want to drink this beer," Brendon says, rubbing at a smudge on the rim of his glass. "Right now, this beer is my--thingy. My higher purpose in life."

 

"Shut up, you don't have a higher purpose," Jon says, and then realizes that's kind of an assholish thing to say.

 

"I've been doing alright so far," Brendon says. "Oh, hey, a tattoo place," he says, pointing through the window. "You want to get tattoos? I want to get tattoos. Like, in general, I mean, I want more tattoos. But also in particular. As in tonight."

 

"No," Jon says, but not because he's trying to be a jerk. He just doesn't really feel like it right now. He's damp but also warm and relaxed, and he'd like to continue feeling that way for the near future. Needles in his skin are not relaxing. "In general, I'm good for now."

 

"But you'll come with me if I do," Brendon says, half-question and half-statement.

 

"Mmm," Jon says. "Yeah, totally. Not tonight though." It's really too bad there isn't a dartboard within throwing distance of their table. Jon doesn't want to stand up, but he would like to throw some small projectiles at a target and see how drunk he really is.

 

"What if we just moved the table?" Brendon says, and oh, hey, Jon realizes he's doing that thing again, with the missing brain-to-mouth filter.

 

Jon kicks the center stand, testing. "It's bolted to the floor," Jon points out. "So no."

 

"What if we..." Brendon says, then trails off and shrugs. "I got nothing."

 

Jon nods and stares out the window again, watching the trails of people navigate the puddles and cars and sidewalks, hunched in the rain. Inertia weighs him down; the bar is packed with conversations and pressing bodies and joining the fray is suddenly too overwhelming for Jon to contemplate. Better to sit and watch, he thinks hazily.

 

"How long did you want to stay?" Brendon asks suddenly, picking at the damp remains of his bar napkin. "I mean--"

 

"Whatever," Jon says. "A while."

 

-

 

It had started with Mexico and surfing, because lately everything with Brendon started with surfing.

 

Brendon just pointed out that they had three months off and he was going to Mexico and left the _you want to come with?_ unspoken, but it was there all the same. Ryan was busy with parties and people, the shiny detritus of LA's bright young things, and Spencer was flying out the day after to visit Haley. Jon didn't have much to do in Chicago that wasn't Cassie, and considering he'd just burned that bridge, Mexico and beer and beaches seemed like a smart idea.

 

Smarter than going home to his parents, anyway, to slightly-pinched smiles and conversations filled with "what happened?" lurking just below the surface. Smarter than trying to follow Ryan around in LA, trying to keep up with all the names and faces and hyphenated occupations. Jon liked Ryan's friends, he really did, they just required so much _energy._

 

Their cabana had had hammocks to sleep in, actual hammocks, and Jon didn't wear shoes for a month. He ate more beans and rice and spicy fish tacos than he'd known existed, and sometimes they just fell asleep on the beach, beers tucked into a convenient sand-hole, waiting for the sunrise.

 

It was great until the tourists started to arrive, at first in small patches but when Jon woke up to a southern drawl and shrieking children next to his window, he'd shifted his weight back and forth until he could swing across to Brendon's hammock.

 

"Brendon, dude," Jon had said, punctuating his sentences with pokes, timed to the swing of the hammock. "I think it's time we hit the road."

 

"What," Brendon had mumbled, because he wasn't awake, but then Jon had just paused meaningfully and let the sound of "THIS WATER IS SO CLEAR! OH MY GOD, SUSAN, YOU NEED TO SEE THESE BEACHES," carry through the window.

 

"Ugh," Brendon said, wiping at his face. "Fuck, yeah, let's get out of here."

 

Everything Jon owned was covered with sand, a thin filmy layer that meant he had to wash all of his clothing three times before the last of it disappeared. He also had to buy shoes at the airport, because he couldn't seem to find any of his own.

 

They stopped off in New Orleans and then Philadelphia, wandering around but not quite feeling at ease. New Orleans was by turns lovely and unnerving, poverty and too many years of grit lurking below the candy-coated surface, and Jon had been berating himself for feeling unsettled until Brendon looked up suddenly one night, drink in hand and said "I can't do this" with a strange, sad expression on his face, like his smile had gotten too heavy to carry. Jon didn't know if Brendon was disappointed in Jon or himself, but they flew out the next day.

 

Philadelphia was quicker, the people harried yet surprisingly warm, but it still didn't have that feeling of at-home-ness like Mexico had, that sense of a needle settling into a groove with a _hissclickclick_. They only stayed three days before Brendon said "New York?" with a wink and a smile, sandwich in hand on the park bench.

 

"Will there be as many hot chicks?" Jon had said, eying a particularly attractive and very underage Drexel student. Jon knew it was both slightly creepy and slightly dangerous for them to be hanging out on a college campus, but they were bored and this place had cheap sandwiches and anyway, _Brendon_ was college age, at least. Besides, Jon was sort of used to being the harmless older guy. It was a role he'd perfected well over the years.

 

"It's New York," Brendon said, chewing and continuing to talk, as usual. "There will be tons of hot chicks. _Acres_ of them. It's where they spawn. Like--like trout. "

 

"Oh, well then," Jon said. "In that case."

 

-

 

It was all academic, anyway. Jon had been utterly uninterested in doing anything beyond looking, and unless Brendon was sneaking girls into the hotel room while Jon showered in the mornings, he'd been just as celibate.

 

It was unusual--for Brendon--but kind of nice, all the same.

 

Jon knew that conventional wisdom held that he needed to go out, enjoy himself, try to forget that one particular smile, stop trying to find it in the faces of others.

 

Jon also thought that conventional wisdom was fucking stupid.

 

-

 

The thing was, Jon had thought long and hard about it, back when he'd had sun in his eyes every morning and too much salt on his tongue.

 

He wasn't pining or moping, because _he_ had broken up with _Cassie_, not the other way around.

 

It hadn't even been a big thing, no screaming matches or careening furniture. Jon had woken up one morning and stumbled downstairs, _coffeecoffeecoffee_ echoing in his mind, eyes still loose from sleep. She'd been wearing one of his old t-shirts and flowered cotton underwear and nothing else, hair piled up on her head with an old hair clip.

 

She'd been so beautiful that morning, messy and just right. Jon knew irrevocably that she needed to be that beautiful for someone else, someone who wouldn't keep leaving, like clockwork, again and again.

 

It wasn't self-sacrificing (he'd decided, guitar in one hand and margarita in the other, watching Brendon ride above the waves), not like he was playing the martyr, he just--knew. She was perfect and wonderful and Jon was never, able going to be able to give her what she wanted and it should have felt like a ton of bricks but instead it just felt like an old ache expanding, something bruised and broken a long time ago.

 

He'd sat down and drank his coffee and then told her; she'd said "Okay" in that strange, soft way of hers, like she'd known before he opened his mouth and she'd just been waiting for confirmation.

 

So it wasn't like he was pining away.

 

it was just that this _thing_ had happened, momentous and awful and strange, and Jon felt he needed to just let it settle for a bit, get used to feeling it tucked up tight next to his bones. It had been right, and he wasn't unhappy. Some days he attained a level of contentment above and beyond what he'd known before, just bumming around with Brendon, camera in his bag, trees in bloom. It was just that he didn't feel a need to go seeking anything out, really.

 

"You're having a quarter-life crisis," Ryan pointed out, tinny over the distance. "Actually, I think you're overdue."

 

"Your Mom's overdue," Jon replied lazily, staring up at the ceiling. Brendon had disappeared somewhere twenty minutes ago with promises of takeout sushi upon his return. Jon probably shouldn't have let him go wander around the city when he was that stoned, but Jon was also stoned at the time, so it didn't occur to him to tell him no.

 

Also, the sushi place was right across the street. Jon decided he'd give Brendon ten more minutes and then possibly go look for him. The ceiling was really pretty, though. It was all swirly.

 

"My mom is not overdue," Ryan said. "Jon, Jon, I don't care what the ceiling looks like, are you listening to me?"

 

"I think I lost Brendon," Jon said. "But I'm listening."

 

"You're having a quarter-life crisis," Ryan said, again, and then didn't say anything for a long time.

 

"And?" Jon finally prompted, when his stomach was starting to rumble.

 

"What? Oh, no, dude, that was my point," Ryan said. "I'm kinda stoned. I just wanted to make sure, you know. That we were communicating and all."

 

"Cool," Jon said, because it was. It was kind of cute when Ryan tried to look out for him. "I need to go find my sushi."

 

"'Kay," Ryan said, and hung up.

 

-

 

Brendon was sitting outside the hotel, smoking a cigarette on the sidewalk. "Jon Walker!" he crowed, lifting a lazy hand up for a high five. "What are you doing out here on this fine afternoon?"

 

"Looking for my sushi," Jon said, and Brendon slapped his forehead. Jon had thought people only did that in movies, but Brendon did it all the time and it was simultaneously amusing and awkward, like a grandmother buying tickets to one of their shows.

 

"I forgot," Brendon said, inhaling another drag. "I just--smoking is really distracting, you know? Like. really distracting."

 

"Yeah," Jon said, even though he didn't have the first clue what Brendon was talking about. "Can I have one?"

 

Brendon wiggled a bit, showing Jon where the pack was tucked in the front vest pocket of his jacket. Jon just took the pack.

 

"Lucky Strikes?" Jon said, picking at the cellophane. "Who are you, Ryan?"

 

"Not at the moment," Brendon said. Jon reached over and stole Brendon's lighter, too. Just because.

 

"We should," Jon said suddenly, lips stretched to hold his cigarette between his teeth. "Let's go do something." It was barely 2pm; Jon felt sure things were still open. Culture-type things. It had been a few days since they managed to leave their hotel before 4 or 5pm but it was nice out, and Jon was getting kind of bored sitting indoors.

 

(Also, they were in the greatest city in the world and if all Jon did was get high and drink, his mom would be so disappointed. He could almost feel her disapproval from here, radiating past the city limits of Chicago with single-minded intensity. An intensity that said _why aren't you using this time wisely and improving yourself, Jon?_ The fact that Jon _had_ improved himself was apparently not important.)

 

"Sushi," Brendon said, pointing across the street with his cigarette, like Jon had forgotten in the past minute and a half.

 

"We'll eat in the cab," Jon said. "Dinosaurs, Brendon. I have a plan."

 

"_Dinosaurs_," Brendon said, with something like glee in his voice. When he turned to Jon, his eyes were hazy, but he was smiling. "Fuck yeah."

 

-

Jon lost Brendon again somewhere in the dinosaur halls, but he didn't mind so much this time, because his stomach was full of sushi and dinosaur skeletons were awesome. The museum wasn't overly crowded for New York in April. There were a few school groups but they were being efficiently and aggressively herded, so they weren't too hard to avoid. Despite this, Jon had looked up and Brendon's shaggy head had been suddenly, conspicuously absent from view. Jon had sighed and felt a bit like he understood the pain of those elementary school teachers two rooms ahead of him.

 

Jon took a few pictures, fiddled with some settings, but the lighting was kind of weird and he eventually lost interest.. It seemed like everything that might make an interesting shot was either behind glass or blocked from view by a family of five. Mostly it was just really hard not to touch everything, because Jon got really tactile when he was high and the fake bones looked smooth and strange. Jon wanted to feel the curves under his fingers and think about forests full of giant trees, imagine the strange confluence of skin and teeth and sinew, now sitting in a vault somewhere when it used to be living and breathing.

 

But he couldn't, so he just wandered, passing by room after room of facts and dioramas and DID YOU KNOW? signs, wondering idly about if Brendon maybe wanted Thai for dinner.

 

He catches up to Brendon somewhere in the space exhibit, in a circular room with black carpet, filled with recessed niches holding precious stones.

 

"No dinosaurs?" Jon says, sidling up to him and scratching a friendly hand along his lower back. Brendon turns and grins.

 

"What? No, they were awesome, I mean, raaaawr, you know," --Brendon demonstrates; Jon looks suitably impressed--"but this part has moon rocks, dude."

 

"Moon rocks?" Jon wonders.

 

Brendon points to a misshapen chunk sitting in the middle of the room. "It came from outer space," he intones solemnly, and Jon thinks _whoa._

 

He dodges a few other visitors and crosses the room, scanning the card which informed him in large Times New Roman that this is the largest meteorite ever recovered intact; it is not, actually, from the moon, but rather from someplace else, the Museum isn't exactly sure. But it's definitely not from earth.

 

There's no signs saying do not touch like there is elsewhere in the museum, so Jon reaches out and places his hand on it. It's cool to the touch and Jon is struck by the strangeness of the situation, that this hunk of rock spent millions of years hurtling through space, black and cold and empty, free-falling with a velocity equal to a thousand jet engines, and now it's under his palm.

 

Jon thinks about being weightless, airless; he thinks about the absence of light, existing in a static vacuum while the millennia tick by and the stars get fainter and farther away. He jerks his hand back.

 

"What?" Brendon says, next to his elbow. "It's cool, right?"

 

"I want to see some polar bears," Jon says.

 

"You can see polar bears at the zoo. Shit, that's what we should have done today." Brendon looks momentarily downtrodden, then perks up again at the sight of a massive volcano mural in the next room. "I fucking love the zoo."

 

"This place is cool, though," Jon says. "We can go to the zoo tomorrow, I think it's all the way out in the Bronx. Which is like. Far away."

 

"Awesome," Brendon says, to everything and nothing in particular. Jon follows behind as Brendon leads the way, with several turns and switchbacks, to what eventually turns into a room with polar bears, along with every other mammal known to man. Brendon has a cowlick in the back of his head, like he spent the night scrunched up against the pillow at an odd angle. Jon wants to reach out and scratch at it but they're walking and Jon might trip over his own feet if he tries. Brendon's hair always smells really good though, and it's really soft, and Jon can't touch anything else in this damn place except moon rocks and Brendon, so he might as well touch Brendon.

 

"I can't believe you're still high," Brendon says, smirking as Jon pets him next to the saber-tooth tiger exhibit.

 

"You're not?"

 

"That was hours ago," Brendon says. "You only pet me when you're high."

 

"Nu-uh, I want to pet you all the time," Jon says, and then pauses to think about it for a minute. Jon was unaware until the words left his mouth that this was a true statement, and it makes something inside him feel a little funny. Brendon snickers at him and wanders off to look at something else with a lot of fur and teeth.

 

Jon knows he's a little high, but he kind of wants to follow Brendon and his soft hair and maybe watch his mouth as he smiles again.

 

_you liiiike him_, Jon's brain trills, inner voice slightly mocking, as though he should have noticed it before. He pauses, halfway through the room, and stares at Brendon's back and thinks about how ugly his jacket is and how he's pretty sure Brendon didn't actually brush his teeth this morning.

 

The urge lessens but doesn't dissipate and Jon thinks about Brendon in their hotel room, barefoot with his guitar, singing melodies back at the strings. The problem is that that's the Brendon Jon sees now, all the time, even when he doesn't brush his teeth. Jon thought traveling with someone was supposed to make you hate them, find out all their dirty secrets, but they've been going on two months now and Jon thinks Brendon might be growing more luminous, more disarmingly intriguing, not less. It worries him.

 

He has spent three years of his life in a bus with this dude, Jon realizes, staring blankly at a display case full of rodents. Nowhere in that time did Jon ever feel a need to kiss Brendon, although it's never like he'd been hard-line opposed to the idea.

 

(Brendon is in fact one of the most kissable people Jon knows, if the scale starts somewhere around Pete Wentz and Greta (awesome, but terrifying) and ends with Zack (No). Brendon was right up there somewhere in the middle, in that easy space of _I would probably hit that if it ever really came down to it, like if we were locked in a room or something and maybe not in a band together_.)

 

Except Jon is not thinking in hypotheticals. He has the feeling that he's going to go back to the hotel and still want to kiss him, and they're going to go out later and drink too much beer and Brendon will try to initiate a burping contest and Jon will _still_ want to kiss him.

 

"I think I'm going to head back," Jon says, when the air feels too heavy and he wants nothing more than to run away and he's trying, instead, to make a dignified exit. "I just want to get some air."

 

"Okay?" Brendon says, and he's frowning, like he's trying to figure out if Jon is leaving, or wants to be left alone, or if he should come with. Jon takes pity on him because Brendon sometimes sucks at nonverbal cues.

 

"Jon-time," Jon says, not unkindly. "I'll see you back at the hotel."

 

"Right," Brendon says, looking relieved. "Totally! See you." Jon wonders if Brendon's going to do that dorky half-wave he does a second before Brendon does it, and Jon thinks _yup, okay, time to leave. it is time for you to leave now._ He should not be able to predict Brendon's mannerisms.

 

Jon leaves the museum and wanders across the street and into Central Park, hopping over the low stone wall that separates the grass from the sidewalk. It's barely 5pm and the winding paths are still full of people, joggers and families and high school kids catcalling back and forth between the trees. Jon just walks and thinks about how nice the trees look, brushed all over with barely-there green. Jon thinks about how he should call his parents, maybe, let them know he's still alive, but he doesn't know what he'll say when they ask when he's coming home, when he wants to come pick up Clover and Dylan. He could just leave, he realizes. He could take off and tell Brendon something came up, find another city to be faceless and nameless in for a while.

 

It's not an answer, though, inasmuch as the situation has an answer. It's not that simple. Jon pretty sure that somewhere along the way there was an unspoken agreement, made in late nights over too many beers with smoke in their eyes. They're running along the same track, parallel lines, and Jon needs to see this through to the end, wherever the hell they end up. It could be nothing, he thinks, stopping to admire a particularly shaggy and excitable dog. Proximity can do weird things to people and maybe when they're all four back together this will be something amusing, something that happened by accident when they were two and one and one, broken up by states and miles. Jon doesn't really feel like laughing.

 

He turns back towards the sidewalks until he reaches an opening and starts to wander downtown, in the general direction of their hotel. He's either going to have to flag down a cab or take the subway--he estimates he's probably at least eighty city blocks away from where he needs to be--but his feet just keep moving him forward and Jon just rolls with it.

 

Maybe he's freaking out about nothing.

 

-

 

That night, Jon stares up at the city lights at 3am and thinks about the feel of the meteorite under his hands. Brendon is a blur of wet leather and smoke beside him on the stoop, sketched from memory and highlighted in red and silver by passing taillights, the cool tones of too much neon. Everyone is talking, shouting, laughing, spilling out from the bar in strange combinations, stumbling on too-tall heels. Jon stares up at the sky and thinks about the spaces between the stars, wonders how far he'd have to run to see the sky again, away from the ambient light of too many lives pressed too close.

 

_We had enough stars in Mexico_, he thinks, and Brendon tugs on his sleeve, begins the process of dragging them both home.

 

-

 

Jon's a little hungover the next morning, but it's nothing that can't be fixed by pancakes and bacon and eggs and sausage. Brendon takes twice as much from the hotel buffet as he does, and eats it all.

 

"Don't you want your coffee?" Brendon says, pushing it towards him. His eyebrows are all knotted up in confusion. The small table they are seated at is sticky, and Jon presses on the pads of all ten of his fingers, then lifts them up one at a time before replying. He knows he's being a little strange but if he opens his mouth, _anything_ could come spilling out.

 

Jon drinks his coffee.

 

"So, Zoo?" Jon says, once he's finished swallowing. "We need to take the subway there, I think."

 

"No, tattoos," Brendon says, through a mouthful of waffle. "But later, I don't think they're open at like 10 am, even in New York."

 

"So we could go to the Zoo first," Jon says. He's kind of stuck on seeing some polar bears and it's all Brendon's fault.

 

Wandering around staring at animals with Brendon sounds like an awesome way to spend the day, especially if those animals are cute and fuzzy, and _especially_ if they can maybe hotbox the bathroom again. The thought of watching Brendon get a tattoo makes him feel a little weird and itchy. It's too much want, too soon, and Jon would rather put it off for a while, just a little while.

 

"Are you going to eat that?" Brendon says, and reaches over to steal his last English Muffin.

 

The zoo allows photography so Jon spends the day wandering around with his camera attached to his neck. Brendon ends up in over half the pictures, and Jon can't tell if it's by accident or design.

 

"You miss her a lot, don't you," Brendon says, sitting on a bench and eating one of those weird super-frozen ice-cream things that they always sell at zoos. Neither of them have to ask which her Brendon's referring to.

 

Jon tips his head back to look at the sun through his sunglasses. He closes his eyes and lets the _orangeredred_ seep through his eyelids, thick and sparkling even through the protective lens. _This is probably how you give yourself brain cancer_, he thinks, but he doesn't stop.

 

Jon mulls over the question until Brendon's scraping at the bottom of his ice cream cup-thingy. "I don't think so," Jon says, weighing each word as it leaves his lips. "I think I could only miss her if I was ever really there, and. I wasn't. Not lately, anyway," he amends, because there was a time when Jon was so _there_ it was almost painful, when it felt like his time on tour was the blur and coming home made everything snap back into focus. He thinks about trying to explain to Brendon his theory of settling down into himself, of how he's not pining so much as letting things lie, but he's not sure Brendon would understand. Brendon likes to keep moving.

 

"Do you miss--anyone?" Jon asks, after a pause. Jon feels like there's something here that he's missing. Brendon can be oddly secretive sometimes, tucking little pieces of himself away. It wouldn't be the first time.

 

"What, like the band?" Brendon says, and gets up to throw his cup away. "I mean, yeah, a little, but that's what phones are for."

 

"No, I meant like--never mind," Jon says. "What do you want to see next, Tiger Mountain?"

 

"No," Brendon says, expression transparent for just a moment. He looks sort of faintly sad, like he's telling the truth and wishes he wasn't. "No, I don't miss anyone."

 

-

 

Brendon pouts when Jon steals his beer in the hotel room, but Jon refuses to relent.

 

"Suck it up, buttercup," Jon says. "They won't tattoo you if you smell like beer."

 

"You're a dick," Brendon says, but doesn't argue the point.

 

"What are you getting, anyway," Jon asks, because Brendon hasn't really mentioned it all day except to point out he needs twice as much food as normal, in case he passes out or something. This is a bald-faced lie; Brendon has never had low blood sugar in his life. Jon buys him dinner anyway.

 

"I don't know yet," Brendon says. "I thought we could just wander until I see something cool."

 

Jon stays silent for a moment, debating. He and Brendon have an agreement, where Jon doesn't point out when Brendon's doing something dumb unless it's life-threatening. In return, Jon gets to make fun of Brendon when it all goes balls-up. It's a pretty good deal. Still, a tattoo is a little more permanent than, say, six shots of Jack.

 

"You realize that's a terrible idea," he points out. "Just like, for the record."

 

"Probably." Brendon grins, wide and unrepentant and there's that little flutter in Jon's chest again and Jon thinks _awww, shit_. Chest flutters are bad news.

 

"Okay, then." Jon says. "Onward, I guess."

 

-

 

Brendon has his faced smooshed into Jon's collarbone on the wrong side of 3am, after the tattoo and the celebratory after-tattoo shots and the woozy cab ride back. The city air was so fresh and perfect through the open windows that Jon very seriously considered sticking his head out like a dog, except Brendon pointed out he might lose an eye to an unsuspecting cyclist. And that he might kill the cyclist in the process. Jon kept his head inside.

 

They had wandered for a while, eventually ending up in front of a place down in the village on MacDougal. Brendon seemed to like one place in particular and sort of meandered in and up to the desk, where one of the employees was erasing something in a sketchbook.

 

"Oh, hey," Brendon had said, "Is that--I like that, it's pretty sweet. Do you have anything maybe a little more...?"

 

Jon had tuned the rest of the conversation out, taking a seat on the couch and flipping through one of the magazines. The lighting was flourescent and flickering but the beer had settled easy between his eyes and Jon ended up reading, totally engrossed in an old issue of AP.

 

"Jon," Brendon had said, nudging his shoulder, bringing him back to the present. "Opinions, man, I need them."

 

"Don't get a tramp stamp," Jon said, not looking up.

 

"I will if you don't look up," Brendon said.

 

Jon risked a glance and wished he hadn't, because Brendon already had his shirt off, head twisted awkwardly over his shoulder so he could peer at the transferred lines. "Yeah?" Brendon said, frowning. "You think?"

 

Jon had swallowed, mouth a little dry, which was dumb because Brendon was naked all the time. It should have been normal and it wasn't and Jon had to keep his hands clenched around the curl of the magazine so he wouldn't touch.

 

The artist had placed the design high on Brendon's left shoulder, a swirl of lines and half-described shapes, just simple linework curving over the muscle. Waves, Jon thought hazily. It looked a little like waves, half-arcs curling in on themselves, tiny dots for the spray. Brendon had looked over his shoulder at Jon, his face unreadable. Jon had the sneaking suspicion Brendon was attempting to tell him something but since he wasn't actually using words, Jon didn't have a fucking clue. He tried to smile encouragingly

 

"Get it," Jon said firmly. "It's fucking cool, go for it," and Brendon had nodded and gone back to find the artist and give him the go-ahead.

 

Jon only watched when Brendon made him, when Brendon wheedled and pleaded until Jon came up and sat in the back.

 

"You're such a pussy," Brendon said, grin a little strained but bright all the same. "I can't believe this freaks you out."

 

_You freak me out_, Jon thought, but it had a tinge of sweetness to it. He made some random comment and tried not to think about Brendon spread out beneath him, about how if he reached over he could feel the muscles jumping under Brendon's skin.

 

Now Brendon is tucked into his side, after Jon washed and smeared and haphazardly wrapped him up again so he didn't bleed ink onto the nice hotel sheets. The guitar is wedged awkwardly between them and it's digging into Jon's hipbone, but he's not particularly concerned about it at the moment. The tequila is burning a low, pleasant hole in his stomach and the bed is comfortable and Brendon's humming snatches of nothing in his ear, strumming chords at random.

 

"MMMmmmhmm?" Brendon hums, questioning, letting his voice trail up the register on the last note and it sounds _interesting_ with the D sharp, but it's not quite right.

 

"Nah," Jon mumbles, listening. "It's more like MMMmmmmmm," and he drops his voice on the last note and it snakes back into harmony with Brendon's guitar, ringing out thick and strong and true.

 

"Oooh," Brendon says. Jon tries to remember the last time either of them said an actual sentence.

 

"So you think that--" Brendon cuts off, and strums the chords again, singing Jon's part this time, and Jon hears the notes with his whole body and it just works where it didn't before, the harmony cutting through him like a knife.

 

The windows are open to the sounds of the city below and the noises steal through, soft and muted like the city lights behind the frosted glass. Brendon is warm at his side. He smells a little like unwashed clothes, and a little like the rain.

 

Jon's brain is a rolling cacaphony of _whatif, whatif_, but now it's lying just under the surface, music and tequila covering over it with a warm, golden burn. _This is how a world ends_, Jon thinks, letting pieces of himself trail out into the night with the breeze, feeling memories soften and fade behind his eyes. Nothing seems quite as immediate as it did before, like everything before this moment has been covered with a thin layer of gray.

 

Brendon shifts a little, moving so he can get his fingers more firmly on the strings. He starts in on a lullaby, an old folk song that Ryan picked up from somewhere and taught them all one night in Michigan. It's easy and wordless and Jon is suddenly struck by the immensity of it all, the perfection of it; it feels like nothing should be this strange and wonderful.

 

Jon can think of nothing but _yes_, some weird sort of brain-affirmation that this life, this moment, this fleeting snatch of now is infinitely whole and contained. Brendon hums next to him, sweet and low. Jon sees the days stretching before him like tiny blocks, outlined with color and tempting in all their blank spaces. There's so much time, Jon realizes. So much fucking time in the world, minutes to hours to weeks to years and Jon spends too much of it just--resting, letting the world turn him in its orbit.

 

It's not something he can explain with words, not really, and so Jon screws up his courage and settles for a kiss instead of a _thank you_, instead of an _I need to_, or a _can we_ or maybe even an _I don't know what i would do if I left_. He tilts his head and presses his lips to Brendon's temple and Brendon pauses, lifts his eyelashes a little so they're face to face.

 

Jon freezes, because, _oh._

 

"Hi," Brendon says quietly, a little rough. This close, Brendon's eyes are soft and surprisingly clear.

 

There are words to be said here, too, but Jon can't quite grasp them. Brendon's fingers are still trailing over the guitar strings and Jon reaches over and presses against them, stilling the chord. "Hi," Jon says finally, and he thinks that maybe he's saying too many things with that one syllable, like it's some sort of admission and apology rolled into one.

 

Brendon just holds on when Jon leans in and kisses him, drags fingers through his hair and pulls him in. The guitar is an uncomfortable barrier between them and Jon shoves it away, only to wince when he hears a wooden crack and a discordant thump of strings.

 

"Whatever, leave it, whatever, it's fine" Brendon mumbles into his mouth, nipping lightly at Jon's lips, his smile beginning to curve under Jon's mouth. "I'll buy you a new one," Jon says, puffs of breath on Brendon's skin.

 

Jon nods, trailing his hands up Brendon's sides, using the sides of his thumbs to map Brendon's silhouette. There's a hint of agave still lingering on Brendon's tongue and Jon licks it off and then pulls back, whispering _hey, hey, are you, is this okay, Brendon_, all the things he should have asked before he started, except he didn't have the words. Brendon's replies are just tirades of _yes yes yes_ and his hands are steady as he leans back in. Jon slides his hand down to curve over Brendon's hipbone. He wants to lick the notes off of Brendon's lips, wants to feel that hum underneath his skin, that sudden sense of _nownownow_ that Brendon seems to carry around him like a blanket. He settles for tracing the ridges of Brendon's spine, letting the notches rise and fall under his fingers, one by one by one.

 

The angle is slightly awkward, though, and Brendon hisses when Jon mistakenly brushes his hand over his shoulder, where he's wrapped up and tender. "Here," Jon says into his mouth, "let me--" and pushes himself up against the headboard, straight-backed, so that Brendon can straddle him. "Better?" Jon says, and Brendon snickers a little into his mouth, something low and amused and happy. "Funny?" Jon says, murmuring the words between breaths of air and the warmth of Brendon's mouth and Brendon says "Nah," and half-smiles again. Jon thinks about the next city, the next hotel, the next beach filled with sugar-fine sand; too much sunshine, Brendon warm beneath him with sunburned freckles on his shoulders. They could pack tomorrow, maybe; spend the day in the laundromat with their guitars and time their notes to the steady thumping hum of the drums, washing their sins away.

 

Brendon under his hands is new and different; he's solid and compact, flat where Jon's hands are used to curves. Jon likes it. He wants to run his tongue along all of Brendon's edges, wants to watch his outlines blur with the sheets, rucked up to standing towers around his shoulders. But Jon doesn't want Brendon to have to lie on his shoulder; the kisses they're trading back and forth like so many secrets are comfortable and lazy. Jon holds back and lets everything come warm and slow, hands trailing over t-shirts and soft laughter and lips on skin.

 

They have time.


End file.
